Some moments in Canadian politics don't need satire. You simply describe what the government is doing and let the absurdity speak for itself.LNG Canada has announced a $33-billion Phase 2 expansion of its massive natural gas liquefaction plant at Kitimat, BC. This is exactly the kind of project Canada desperately needs: private investment, Canadian natural gas, thousands of construction jobs, and another major export route to Asia. The expansion will double LNG production from roughly 14 million to 28 million tonnes annually. That part should be celebrated.Then we get to the steel.Major prefabricated processing modules will once again be built in China by China Offshore Oil Engineering Co. (COOEC) — a state-controlled Chinese company associated with China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). The same company constructed the modules for Phase 1. PetroChina, another Chinese state-controlled enterprise, owns 15% of LNG Canada itself.Apparently, this is what “Buy Canadian” now means in Ottawa.When Mark Carney announced LNG Canada Phase 2 as one of his major “nation-building” projects, he wrapped it in all the familiar language of economic sovereignty. These projects, Canadians were told, would strengthen our independence and resilience by using Canadian steel, aluminum, engineers, and tradespeople. Carney even declared that Canada would become “our own best customer.”That is all fine and good, except, apparently, when China wants the work..What makes this especially insulting is that the Carney government already knows exactly what Chinese steel represents. Canada imposes a 25% surtax on many Chinese steel products because the federal government itself says China uses non-market policies, massive state subsidies, industrial overcapacity, and oversupply that damage Canadian workers and producers. Ottawa has also tightened restrictions on steel melted and poured in China.So let's follow the logic. Canada says Chinese steel is unfairly subsidized and threatens Canadian industry. Canada taxes it to protect Canadian jobs. Then one of the largest industrial projects in this country turns around and sends major fabrication work to a Chinese state-owned company. The hypocrisy is astounding.The OECD has documented the scale of the problem. Chinese steel producers receive subsidies at rates dramatically above those received by their international competitors, while Chinese steel exports have flooded world markets and depressed prices. China exported roughly 131 million tonnes of steel in 2025 — more than eleven times Canada’s entire annual steel production.Western producers are expected to compete with companies supported by the Chinese state, cheap capital, enormous economies of scale, and an industrial strategy specifically designed to dominate global markets. Canadian governments acknowledge this problem every time they announce another tariff or trade remedy, yet somehow those principles evaporate when a large Canadian project needs something built.LNG Canada offers a defence. It says Canada does not currently have fabrication yards capable of building modules of this size and complexity, and that only a handful of facilities worldwide can do the work. During Phase 1, COOEC constructed 35 enormous modules weighing roughly 179,000 tonnes, some weighing about 10,000 tonnes each.But that does not settle the argument. Canada already has a substantial steel and pipeline industry. Mills in Regina, Sault Ste. Marie, and elsewhere have supplied line pipe to the energy sector for decades, and Enbridge is currently installing Canadian-made 42-inch pipe on its Sunrise expansion in British Columbia. We can make the steel, we can make the pipe, and we certainly have the engineers, welders, pipefitters, and heavy-industrial tradespeople.More importantly, the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC) disputes LNG Canada’s claim that the work must go offshore. CISC says Canadian fabricators could perform a substantial portion of the Phase 2 work, including the modules themselves, and says LNG Canada did not even approach its members before concluding that Canadian industry lacked the capability. Before telling Canadians that China is the only practical answer, would it not seem reasonable to ask the Canadian industry?.This is not even a new dispute. During Phase 1, Ottawa granted LNG Canada relief from anti-dumping and countervailing duties on imported fabricated steel modules. Those duties existed precisely because Canadian authorities had concluded that dumped and subsidized foreign steel was harming Canadian producers. CISC opposed the exemption, arguing that more of the project could be built in Canada if the work were structured differently, including through smaller modules and additional domestic fabrication.Ottawa granted the exemption anyway.And that brings us to the question any reasonable Albertan should be asking: why? If Canada truly could not build these modules during Phase 1, why did we spend the intervening years doing nothing to develop that capability? If we can't do that, why have we not redesigned the modules to fit our steelmaking capacity? We have iron ore, steel mills, ports, shipyards, engineering expertise, and world-class tradespeople. Governments have spent billions talking about rebuilding domestic manufacturing, strengthening supply chains, and restoring industrial sovereignty. Yet when one of the largest energy projects in the country needs sophisticated fabrication, we are once again told that Canada cannot do it and China can.That explanation from LNG Canada should make Canadians angrier, not more understanding. Either Canadian industry can do substantially more of this work, as CISC argues, but was never seriously given the opportunity, or Canada genuinely lacks the capacity after years of government promises to rebuild domestic industry. Or is something far more nefarious at work? None of these explanations reflects particularly well on Ottawa. And sending the work to a Chinese state-owned company while imposing tariffs to protect Canadian steelworkers from subsidized Chinese competition only makes the contradiction more ridiculous.Canadian steel will be used in other parts of the expansion. LNG Canada says approximately 15,000 tonnes, or about 70% of the steel required for new Coastal GasLink compressor-station work, is expected to come from Canadian suppliers or mills. That is welcome, but it also proves the obvious: when projects are structured to use Canadian steel, Canadian companies can compete.Not that every bolt and beam must be made in Canada. But the issue is the staggering hypocrisy of declaring Chinese industrial overcapacity a threat while outsourcing major fabrication to a Chinese state-owned enterprise. Let’s not digress here to building ferries for BC, as that is another whole essay. Wilful blindness, indeed..We lecture Americans about protectionism while protecting our own steel industry with tariffs. We denounce Chinese subsidies while benefiting from the industrial capacity those subsidies created. We talk endlessly about secure supply chains, Canadian sovereignty, and rebuilding domestic manufacturing, then quietly accept the premise that the most technically demanding work cannot be done here.And please spare us the argument that LNG Canada is a private company and therefore free to buy wherever it wishes. Of course it is. But this Liberal government voluntarily wrapped this project in the flag, called it nation-building, and endlessly promoted “Buy Canadian.” Ottawa told workers these projects would strengthen Canadian industrial capacity. Those were their promises.If Canada genuinely lacks the facilities required to fabricate components for projects of this scale, then building that capacity should be a national priority. Governments should ask what regulatory, tax, labour, investment, and infrastructure barriers prevent Canadian firms from competing, then remove them.Instead, we appear content to outsource the capability itself.That should infuriate Canadians because this is about far more than one LNG plant or one steel order. A country that cannot build the critical industrial components required for its own energy projects is not becoming more sovereign. It is becoming more dependent.Canada has the resources, the workers, the expertise, and the capital to build things. What we increasingly lack is a government willing to create the conditions in which Canadians are allowed to do just that.Buying Chinese state-supported fabrication while preaching Canadian economic nationalism is not clever global trade policy. It is hypocrisy dressed up as strategy, and Canadians should be furious. I certainly am, but I fear I am one of the few paying attention.
